About My Novel — Fleshing out a character

You might be already familiar with the fact that my next writing project is a historical novel.

One of the stages when working on a novel is Profiling The Characters.

Isn’t that purely delightful? As a writer, you have the chance to create something new, exciting, and a new person altogether. With honesty and willingness to pour your beliefs into it.

The purpose of this ‘fleshing out’ exercise is to explore what I know and what I understand about the main character that I have already profiled.

Fleshing out must be done in one page, that should keep me on the straight line and get to the core points. It should be like a ‘telly’ narrative, a block of description that won’t go in the novel itself, it’s in sentence form, and I let the character speak to me.

That’s the Muse at work, and I shall not feel limited by the profile I have already created for her, I can bend it, tweak it, and add to it.

I’ll do my best to make my character delightful.

Meda grew up as a princess and she knew early that she was different. There were things that she could do, hear, or see, that nobody else could. The heat in her hands could heal and take away the pain. She never dared to explore her powers too much.

She learned how to hide them, and it helped that she trained in all kinds of weapons since she was a little girl with her brother. She became a fearless princess.

She has an inquisitive mind, she loves knowledge and searching for answers. She is equally satisfied with the search and the result. The stars hold a magic world; she believes in signs and nature’s power.

She loves nature, and she has the strongest sense of belonging in places like the top of a mountain. Another part of herself that she hides from everyone else is her sentimental nature; she follows the clouds hanging in the sky, and the smell of rain over the forest makes her happy. The horse, wolf, and snake are her favorite animals, as she believes they each represent a precious quality.

The legends and war stories of her people, told to her by her nurse, her mother, and Zoutula, created a world in her head. The deep respect and pride for her ancestors’ bravery brought a strong will to serve her people. She knows she must help her people, it’s a duty; she protects the weak and feels the need to repair wrongdoings, she has a strong sense of justice — and she takes advantage of her royal status to achieve justice and right wrongs in the ways she sees fit.

After Cotiso’s death, she became the ‘first’ born in the royal successive line and she automatically had to assume some of his roles and responsibilities. The king trusted her, but only because she managed to hide her pain when Cotiso died. She showed no more than what the king wanted to see in his daughter.

A young woman, a warrior princess, a sorceress, with an overflowing conflict between her dominant strength and dominant weakness, and her weakness is the strength taken to extremes.

She can make mistakes and make bad decisions. Through her actions self-confidence and courage become overconfidence and foolhardiness.

She sometimes imposes her decisions on others due to her stubbornness and quick temper, both of which lead to even more great errors of judgment.

For any situation, Meda can always come up with a bolder solution that seems impossible until she makes it happen. She feels she has nothing to lose and that she just has to go for it.

This is Myrameda, a Dacian princess and sorceress, and I hope she already sounds like a great character that readers will want to follow.

Let me know what you think.